Congrats Penilers!

You're in the top 10 states of the US of Fucking A!

You are not just fat, you are obese!

Thank the media - instead of feeding your heart and mind, it fed your face and your arse!

Fight the merger

Comcast's pack of sleazy wolves are not what this nation needs to rebuild some semblance of open, public, communication. Take action now to stop this disaster - or, if the folks in power have no scruples, then make sure they can't say they allowed this to go forward in blind ignorance of the facts:

Cargo Cult

More here...

John McCain's Iraq: Ten thousand more years

Fox hypnotics - Repeat after us: "Airheads' Fairy"

Milking it at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune

On Monday the pages of the New York Times got smaller, and today one of its major regional news organizations laid off more editorial staff. Only a month after offering a cheapskate buyout of employees 50 and older (and chickenshittedly fessing up), the Sarasota Herald-Tribune is once again announcing that it's "trimming" staff.

Although the article says the number reporters laid off is "unspecified," the bloodletting was in fact quite specific, according to sources within the newsroom. The-about-to-be-trimmed staff was hastily summoned to suspenseful, must-attend meetings in each of the paper's newsrooms, and those being laid off were given their walking papers in front of the entire assemblages.

There's an as yet unconfirmed report that in some bureaus, the assemblies were, Last Judgment-like, divided into two groups. One group was then informed it was saved, the other advised of its damnation.

The Sarasota paper may be the flagship of regional Times rags, but this manner of treating its employees bespeaks a thuggish, mandarin culture that demeans the profession.

The paper is also bagging its tedious "Florida West" section (but rescuing its most tedious features: food, wine, health and fitness,) and closing certain of its bureaus to the public. Ironically, the paper that once feared to attach its name to its online site (it called it Newscoast.com for over a year) now claims it will create "interactive web sites" -- that give citizens the right to post vanity pictures -- to placate residents in the areas where many of the cuts were made.

"Because our customers increasingly interact with us by phone or e-mail, the North Port and Englewood offices will be closed to the public," [Sarasota Herald-Tribune Publisher Diane McFarlin] said. "Customers who prefer to visit us in person can do so at our Venice and Port Charlotte locations."

Virtual readership indeed. Perhaps if the paper actually covered events, realities, hard news with something resembling integrity, it would have fewer revenue concerns.

Then again, it likes to remind its employees that it's a cash cow for the New York Times, which is said to milk all its regionals to buttress its sagging butt. With Rupert Murdock now assuming control of Dow Jones, the Times corporate leeches must be yanking those lugs like they're going out of style. Which it seems they are.




Update: McFarland's memo to staff during the last buyout offer, via Romanesko, via Fading to Black.

Homes for Mary Jane in Sarasota, Charlotte, Lee Counties

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports on grow houses:

As housing prices fall along Florida's Gulf Coast, suburbs like Lehigh Acres, North Port and Port Charlotte have become a haven for "grow houses" where high-grade marijuana is cultivated and harvested.

While the Herald-Tribune prefers to attribute much of this booming new "grass roots industry" to lower echelon bedroom communities like Port Charlotte, Sarasota County's own code enforcement officers say they're finding the Mary Jane Subdivisions among some of the high end housing in Venice and Sarasota.

Amazing how often the SH_T has to go outside of its prime circulation area to cover stories that can be found on its own doorstep.

The new Real Estate Boom appears to be a hit in Port St. Lucie as well, according to the DEA.

Hate crime in Sarasota goes unnoticed by Sarasota press for a week

A family that migrated from Bosnia to Sarasota, Florida, returned home to find their house destroyed by fire, vandalized and covered with anti-Muslim graffiti.

This happened on July 6th, but only began to be reported by local media on July 13th.

It took the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, the "newspaper of record" for the city and county of Sarasota, on the Gulf Coast of the Penile State, until July 14th to acknowledge the event's existence.

The paper, struggling with its own problems of dwindling readership, advertising and real estate woes, clearly has better things to do than report hate crimes that destroy the homes of families who have lived in the city for three years with no record of any disturbances.

The paper has not done a follow-up story. One wonders what it would have made of this if the home were owned by one of the local celebs that juice its salivary glands, or, say, just by a typical cute white family, instead of by a family named Sejfovic from Bosnia with three kids.

The SH_T finally squeezed out an update.

"None of the elected officials who actually live in this community have said anything."

What, them worry? when the media itself displays utter indifference...